Paul Nguyen ART

Its Chinese New Years!

paulsart — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:11:33 +0000

Im a little bit late on this post but hey better late than never. I wanted to make a poster for the new years since I do celebrate the Vietnamese/Chinese New year. This year is the year of the dragon so i decided to do a dragon inspired piece. This one is of the traditional Dragon/Lion dance done all over the world. I hope you all enjoy it. Happy New Years!.

Virgin Mary of Pieta

paulsart — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 10:25:08 +0000

I recently made a wood burn for my older sister Catherine and my brother-in-law Victor for Christmas. I am especially fond of this one because I tried a new method and I got it ok… I still have to replicate the process a few times before I can say I have it down right. Its a personal method I attempted to do. If I tried to explain it, I would probably lose you. haha My mind is out there and I do not know really what I am doing. I just know what the end result should be.

Hope you enjoy. Its a close up version of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus if you haven’t figured it out already and you didn’t read the Title at all.

Till next piece. I will be putting the pieces on Etsy.com for sale soon. Keep posted I will let you know when I do and what pieces will be up.

More Wood Burning for the Holidays

paulsart — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:17:50 +0000

Since its the holidays sorry I’ve been lagging on getting more posts up. Ive been trying to crank out some holiday gifts and tattoos at the same time. Check out these two pieces I just recently did. My grandpa recently went into the hospital for some brain issues… Figuring he has a major headache I did Saint Theresa, Saint of Headaches for him.

This one I used an up and down stroke for the entire piece minus the background. The background I used a different nib to get the cloud effect.

The next one I just finished is of Saint Catherine of Avila, patron saint of Nurses. Ive been getting a lot of enjoyment doing Religious themed pieces recently. The imagery is touching and I hope you all enjoy the pieces that are to come. I have some good ones!!

For this piece I tried doing some cross hatching to get the shades i needed.

I applied the same nib I used for the clouds in the first piece to do the cloak on this piece. Trying to apply two techniques. Practice makes perfect I guess. Well never learn if you don’t ever try I think is a better way of saying it.

Keep posted on my tattoos and sketches as well. Follow me on Instagram: PAULNGUYENART if you have an apple.

Chest Progress

paulsart — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:00:58 +0000

Getting close to finishing up the phoenix chest piece coverup on my boy Eric today. We have another session of final touchups and final go over to make sure its all buttoned up nice and tight. Check it out.

Wacom Tablet

paulsart — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 16:16:23 +0000

Ok well those of you who know me and or have followed me on Facebook Twitter or Myspace know I mess around with Illustrator/Photoshop a little bit in the past. Well I picked up a Wacom Cintiq not toooo long ago. Well ok.. a little bit ago haha. Anyhow…Im finally messing with it trying to get used to it and get back into photoshop etc. Heres something I did when I was bored. Ill have some more soon. Holidays are coming so I’ll be cranking out some artwork for sale if anyone is interested. Just send me an email. paulsart@gmail.com or follow me on Facebook/Twiiter/Instagram.

Tibet Skull Front Piece

paulsart — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:30:26 +0000

I had the honor to tattoo a great guy named Brent the other day. He came to the studio with my homie Noser. I had a drawing lying around that I did recently but haven’t tattooed yet… Well actually wasn’t thinking of it as a tattoo as i was drawing it but when Brent mentioned he wanted a big piece. Hey I kind of leaned towards that piece. Heres a picture of the sketch. Pretty much a tibetan skull with a lotus under and spider lily going around and over with a waterfall coming out of its eyes etc.

So after the sketch.. had i had to stencil up his body take some pictures and prepare for the actual tattoo. So I gave myself a month before his appointment. Man this guys a champ! We ended up drawing for about 2 hours using the refined sketch as a road map.

Learned a lot from Filip Leu when I visited Switzerland with Ben Corn. Plus watching Ben do back piece and sleeves and full suits for a good 5 years helps. Thanks Ben.

A lot of other minor…well i’d say major ideas came about while doing this piece as well from studying his work. Well one quick one would be after seeing the piece he did on Shige’s Rightside Skull, Genius! I had to apply that, or attempt to. (what you ask?? you should study it too Other muscles and flow came into mind as I did this piece as well. Where the muscles started and ended, movement of the body, stretching etc. It was a fun start. Now to finish…I tried to add as much dimension as I could to it using waterfalls and the snake. Snake was inspired by Robert Atkinson. He kills snakes… Thanks Robert. Hey Im working on it.

The outline was a real rough session. There is a lot of details that need to be addressed when we get to the sections.

Well guys keep posted on the progress. -PN

Wood Burns My Soul

paulsart — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 09:15:32 +0000

I found a new fun filled art this last six months… Wood Burning. Ive been into wood carvings before but never started burning wood until this past few months when I got heavy into it. Its similar to tattooing in the fact that you really can’t mess up…Im taking it pretty serious. Check out what I finished today. You can check out some other ones in my gallery. Im slowly adding older pieces to this site so please be patient. Ill try to add blogs on the regular to showcase some of my work and just BS about what I did with them. Hope you enjoy thanks.

I think one of the harder things to do is to find the right piece of wood for your piece… I haven’t found a good source yet for random wood so I’ve been using the ones i get at the craft store.. Thats ok but you don’t get the best wood at times. Luckily I’ve been waiting to use this piece for the right project and i believe it worked well.

Like any replication i had to create a stencil and transfer it to the wood. Then i burned it all so that it could stand on its own burned. No color needed. I just started using color recently to step up my game… I could be finished with the burning but.. putting color into it freaks me out sometimes. What if i Fuck up the color?? damn.. that’d suck..all that burning for nothing!. So far i burn.. then I varnish with different tints of wood to get the colors.. if i don’t have the correct varnish I utilize acrylics watered down like watercolors.

Till next time.. thanks for looking.

Anh’s Piece

paulsart — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:22:53 +0000

A lot of people who come to me with larger pieces have come to be good friend or have been friends reconnected after many years. My good friend Anh and I met years ago back in junior high/high school. Thanks to the goodness of the great world wide web met again on Friendster and Myspace and I had the opportunity to start work on her and catchup after all these years. We started with a couple of pieces on her arm, worked our way to her chest and now onto the back. We began with a cover up in her mid back using the peacock and branch as the main coverup.

Ann said she wanted a back piece and I cranked my head to come up with something unique, fun and at the same time flow with what she has already started. So I came up with a huge heart with rays of light. Blood poring down creating a stream that would flow into a pond of koi fish.

The pond would then stream off to the the right side and go into a little asian scene where you’ll see a bridge and trees/forest. I believe at the time I was watching Mark Mahoney and Freddy Negrete do some fine line action. Actually the whole crew over there at Shamrock Social Club in Hollywood put in some work. So I tried to start adding miniature scaled work into my bigger pieces to give it diversity and depth. I love doing larger scaled pieces but I also love the smaller fine line pieces. So i tried my best to intermix the two.

Freehand drawing session on the whole back including the peacock… then onto the shading.

We have a few more sessions to refine some parts, give it some more contrast and also fill in the back some more. Its a fun piece and I hope you all enjoy it as well.

Have to Start Somewhere.

paulsart — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 03:33:47 +0000

Well if I’m going to start blogging, I guess I need something to talk about. I might as well start with Ben Corn. I met Ben back in 2005 from my buddy Sethro who was getting some cover work done on is arm. Told me to see his boy Ben in Temecula. So I went down there with my portfolio and me and Ben hit it off. Started my apprenticeship. Ben and the family at Epidemic Tattoo in Temecula showed me how to get down and dirty, literally. I was down on the floor scrubbing the toilet and cleaning the shop daily… haha I learned how to take plenty of lip lashing like a man…Tough love as they say. Learned to work hard… keep your mouth shut and do what I’m told… After I learned the life lessons which took my hard head a minute to comprehend, finally onto the tattoo basics starting with making needles to building machines, tattoo art history and tattoo art styles, eventually the art of Tattooing and most important of all the respect for one’s skin and respect for those in the trade. ”You never know who knows who in this industry, mind your P’s and Q’s.” – Gill Monte told me. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into but looking back at it, I would never change a thing. Met so many amazing artists along the way and I’m blessed to have had some great work from some of them as well starting with Ben himself.
(Front that Ben did on me. Thanks Ben! didn’t hurt one bit! F*k!)

I am grateful and honored to have studied, learned, continue to learn and now work aside Ben.

(Musink 2009)

I am still a long way from where I want to be but as every day passes I am happy and blessed to have met a new person, learn a new technique from someone, share a laugh, a smile, a tear, a story, and some type of new knowledge.

(Wood burn for Ben… oooh its soo hot!)

New Site!

paulsart — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:55:06 +0000

What’s up guys. Finally had an opportunity to get the new site up and running. I hope you guys enjoy. Still working out the little bugs. But I love the blog. I can now interact with everyone outside of Facebook and Twitter and all the other crazy sites.. now i can just rave and rant and say whatever the F* I want. haha…

Thanks Pro, Andrew from GOMUSTARD.com and the crew over at IE PHOTORENTALS.com for the support.

Well keep posted and and ill keep updating this thing with artwork and cool tattoos and cool things I’m doing!! sweet ! PEACE thanks for visiting.